Letter: Unions, schools must cooperate on education reform

Saturday

Sep 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMSep 29, 2012 at 7:00 AM

New York Times columnist Joe Nocera is right that teachers unions and schools must cooperate in improving education ("Teachers drawing the line.")

For me, this is about politics as much as about education. Charter schools, which are publicly funded but operate within their own rules, play a role in this issue. While public school staff members are generally unionized, unions in charter schools are optional and often discouraged.

On the positive side, the current issue of The New York Teacher reports on a proposal for an innovative charter school in Brooklyn, with the union as an active partner. However, on the same page is an article about the conflict at a New York City high school charter regarding the administration’s reluctance to conclude contract negotiations with the union.

The highly charged strike by union teachers in Chicago is an example of the damage done by two sides that cannot agree. While the salary dispute was easier to resolve, teachers protested being fired because their students did not do well on standardized tests, citing the influence on test scores of such factors as poverty and violence. It’s tough; there is no magic bullet for improving the chaotic state of education in this country, but let’s not demonize teachers and unions. It would be a great leap if the unions and schools worked together.

DOREEN GELLMAN

West Palm Beach

Panel to aid teachers has no teachers

When I retired in 2010 after 36 years of teaching, my top reflection on school administration was, "No one ever asked me." An incredible number of trivial details are created for teachers and their classrooms without any request for input.

So now our governor will name a five-member panel charged with cutting regulations and red tape that distract teachers ("Scott vows to clear way for teachers .") Think there might be a teacher put on that panel? Nah. Five superintendents will fill it. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

SANFORD SCHUMAN

West Palm Beach

Actions will show if Scott is serious

It seems a little late for Gov. Scott to be listening to teachers, students and parents. He’s done everything wrong for education at every level, and now he wonders what the people are thinking, and it’s secret when he talks to them.

I hope he understands the situation and is able to do something about it. If that miracle happens and Gov. Scott decides that education of our children is very important to all of us, he will show his leadership by budgeting proper funding for building and maintaining all public schools, remove the competition and strive for cooperation and stop using teachers’ retirements to plug state budget gaps.

JACKIE MAYE

Boynton Beach

Worry about polls forced Scott to listen

Thank you for the truthful editorial evaluation ("The governor didn’t hear") of Gov. Scott and his motives for the "listening tour." For two years, teachers have been shouting in the wind of reform. Now Gov. Scott is worried that we will make our voices heard at the polls. Keep up the good work .Thank you for supporting public education and the teachers of Palm Beach County.

KAREN ZAREMBA

Lantana

Editor’s note: Karen Zaremba is a teacher at Palm Beach Central High School.

Teachers don’t want to be held accountable

Regarding the Chicago teachers strike: Coming off a three-month paid vacation, the teachers went to work for two weeks and then walked off the job, putting the parents of the 350,000 students into an unexpected dilemma. Do the words extortion and blackmail come to mind?

The median income of a working Chicagoan is $47,000 per year. The median income of a Chicago teacher is $76,000 per year. The paid vacation for the union teachers is 15 weeks. Plus, the teachers get full medical and dental for themselves and their families, and a retirement package that is bankrupting their government.

They don’t want to be judged or held accountable by the results of their work. This gives the good teachers a bad image. Can you imagine anyone in the private sector demanding that from his employer? Public-sector unions don’t care how bad our economy is. This is a dangerous road we’re on.

GEORGE D. PYLE

West Palm Beach

Professionals can exploit absentee ballots

Kudos for the editorial "Absentee ballots too risky." I would add some other problems with them.

I should like to know who filled out the ballots in the Mack Bernard-Jeff Clemens election. It is too readily possible for political professionals to seek out numbers of these people, vote ballots "on their behalf" then have them sign their names. And some voters didn’t understand the signature instructions? If they couldn’t even read brief instructions, how could they make reasonably intelligent choices? There is just too much opportunity for chicanery as the ballots move back and forth to and from the absentee voters.

BILL NEUBAUER

West Palm Beach

Don’t be swayed by Netanyahu’s ‘red line’

Regarding the debate over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asking President Obama to set a "red line" for Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapons, the Sept. 3 issue of The New Yorker magazine buried a quote by Shaul Mofaz, the former Israeli defense minister.

The seven-page "Letter from Tel Aviv" by David Remnick centers on Mr. Netanyahu’s threats to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, aggression that President Obama opposes at this time. Gen. Mofaz is quoted as saying to the prime minister:

"Over the past few months, Israel has waged an extensive and relentless p. r. campaign with the sole objective of preparing the ground for a premature military adventure. This p.r. campaign has deeply penetrated the ‘zone of immunity’ of our national security, threatens to weaken our deterrence and our relations with our best friends. Mr. Prime Minister, you want a crude, rude, unprecedented, reckless, and risky intervention in the U. S. elections."

Voters in the United States, who could be swayed by Mr. Netanyahu, should digest Mr. Mofaz’s words as a warning.

JOSEPH H. CARTER SR.

Delray Beach

U.S. failed to protect citizen killed in Israel

Regarding the article "Israeli court: activist’s death accident," I could not help but feel outrage for the decision that the death of Rachel Corrie was a regrettable accident. The U.S. government has failed to protect the rights of a U.S. citizen and peaceful human rights activist.

Israel has a history of regrettable accidental killings (the USS Liberty in 1967) and the State Department has a history of covering up these accidents. Yet the U.S. ambassador to Israel stated that the Israeli military investigation was not thorough, credible or transparent. Israel boasts of being the only democracy in the Middle East, but by its actions regarding this regrettable accident Israel is behaving no differently from the despots it criticizes.

DONA BRINKMAN

Boca Raton

Obama, like Romney, has no military service

Regarding the letter-writer who criticized Mitt Romney for doing missionary work in France during the Vietnam War: Where did President Obama do serve his military service? What rank was he? If you do background on one, make it on both parties. Besides, what does Dick Cheney have to do with any of this?

JUDY MARTIN

West Palm Beach

Issue of abortion may never be settled

Regarding the letter-writers who believe that the Supreme Court settled the abortion issue in 1973: That premise is flawed.

In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation was the law of the land, based on the 14th Amendment. Think of it as "an issue that was settled in (1896) by the Supreme Court." Had people taken the writer’s attitude, there never would have been the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which declared racial segregation to be unconstitutional.

Every generation has the right and the responsibility to revisit issues of all manner that interests them. Women vote because of this. Sales of alcohol were banned then lifted because of this. Even rights ordained by God and reaffirmed in the U.S. Constitution are subject to this revisiting. The writer has every right to support the murder of unborn people, though I believe him wrong. But do not make the mistake of thinking it an "issue settled." It most assuredly is not and may never be.

JIMMY L. SHIRLEY JR.

Palm Springs

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